Mallori's Journal

For my movie remake review, I chose to write about the movie "The Parent Trap." The original was released in 1961 starring Hayley Mills and the remake was made in 1998 starring Lindsay Lohan. For such a vast gap in the time difference between the two movies one would think that there would be a lot of differences, but it was quite the contrary, there were more similarities that were apparent then there were differences.
One of the main things that is different between these two films, which actually brings out the time difference a bit is the introduction to the films. In the 1961 version, the introduction is a Claymation of cherubs acting out scene upon scene of the parents getting divorced and separating the twin girls. However, in the 1998 version the movie begins with a boat moving across the water and a young couple going through a quaint wedding ceremony. After the opening scene, both films continue in the same direction with the twin girls, who were separated when they were younger, ending up at the same camp and meeting each other for the first time.
There is another difference that appears however in the 1961 version. In this version, the girls at the camp are all notified that there was going to be a dance and the boys from a neighboring camp were going to come as well, because the camp the girls went to was all girls. In the 1998 version this dance is never mentioned and never occurs.
Another one of the big differences in these two films is that in the 1961 version of the film you never find out what the mom does for a living it is just an assumption that she lives with her parents and is a stay at home mom, although it is mentioned that she volunteers at the Red Cross. However, in the 1998 version the mother in the film is a successful bridal gown designer and has her own shop called "Elizabeth James" the mother's name in the film. This was quite interesting to me because I think that actually reflected the time setting of the first film because it was coming out of the 1950's era when women were supposed to be the ones to stay at home, but a lot has changed since then so I believe that to be the reason for making the mother a working one in the 1998 version.
Aside from the differences, one of the main similarities that appear is the process of when the twins switch places. It is basically exactly the same the twin from Boston (Sharon McKendrick in the 1961 version and Annie James in the 1998 version) and the twin from Napa Valley (Susan Evers in the 1961 version and Hallie Parker in the 1998 version) both have a picture as the way they find out that they are truly twins in both films. In both films the twins switch places and move in with the opposite parent and pretend to be the opposite twin sister in order to get to know their father/mother better. Finally the main similarity that can be noticed is that in the end the parents of the twins end up together even though there had been obstacles standing in the way at points.
Both of these movies were very well done, but I would definitely choose the 1998 version of "The Parent Trap" over the 1962 version because as said before it is more modern and appeals more to the 21st century audience.

I am personally the hopeless romantic type of person, so I love listening to music that is soft, mellow and can basically be referred to as a love ballad. Everytime I drive the hour and a half home to Sacramento, I have this mixed CD with me that clearly shows how much I love these types of songs! The songs go as followed:

Alsion Krauss & Union Station - When You Say Nothing At All
Martina McBride - I Love You
Evan and Jaron - From My Head to My Heart
U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Eric Clapton - Blue Eyes Blue
Daryl Hall & John Oates - And That's What Hurts
Shawn Colvin - Never Saw Blue Like That
Dixie Chicks - You Can't Hurry Love
Fleetwod Mac - Landslide
Marc Anthony - You Sang To Me
Allure - You're The Only One For Me
Coco Lee - Before I Fall In Love
Miles Davis - It Never Entered My Mind
Ella Fitzgerald - I Only Have Eyes For You

This story is quite an amazing one. The “On the Media” presentation I wrote about was entitled, “Blast Off” and was an interview between Brooke Gladstone, from “On the Media” and Josh Marshall, who writes “Talking Points Memo.” First, let me explain what the “Talking Points Memo” is. It can basically be considered a blog, by Josh Marshall, which talks about his opinion of what is going on around the country and the world in regards to politics. When I went to the site, Marshall had been giving updates on the campaign every fifteen minutes and explaining what had been happening with the different states and their opinions. In my opinion, what Marshall is doing is basically informing the public about everything that is happening in politics at the moment.
The presentation began with talking about the missing explosives and how inconceivable it is that they have been declared missing. It says in the beginning of the presentation, “Bush administration war planners left bunkers of hundred of tons of explosives unguarded in post-Saddam Iraq.” The explosives have now been reported missing from the bunkers and are now presumably in the hands of the enemy, as Brooke Gladstone puts it. Obviously this was going to have an affect on the campaign and how the American people look at Bush and his reliability. Gladstone also went on to say, “final wreck of the campaign was, if not explosive, at least about explosives.” She quoted Kerry and Bush in their responses to the missing explosives. Kerry directed this comment towards Bush, you owe America real answers and Bush responded with saying that Kerry does not know all the facts behind the situation.
The major question that is being presented behind all of this at the moment is where did these explosives go and how did we not know that they were missing up until now? Gladstone also explained in the presentation that it is a possibility that the Russians had taken them before the War in Iraq had even begun. When I heard this comment it surprised me that there was even a possibility that they could have been missing for more then the last few weeks they could have been missing since the beginning of the war in 2001.
The main thing that is in a blunder at this point is the reporting. ABC showed a clip of soldiers breaking UN seals off boxes of explosives and the correspondent who showed that clip explained that the materials shown in the clip may or may not be the explosives in question. However, the former chief weapons inspector confirmed that some of the explosives were actually the missing ones, but at this point how reliable is anyone’s opinion in regards to the missing explosives and their whereabouts. Gladstone is quoted in saying, “”all reporters are confused right now” and that is the most truth I had heard come out of the interview so far. Even Lawrence Di Rita, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said, “we don’t have any answers right now.”
The interview then began with Josh Marshall and Gladstone asked him what he thought about the fact that the stories keep changing, meaning one minute the story says this and then another minute someone else comes out and says that is wrong please disregard that. Marshall responded with, “I think what you're saying is exactly right, and when I said that the cacophony of voices shakes out to a relatively accurate version of things, that doesn't excuse how bad the journalism often is in the short term. What is running right now on CNN and MSNBC and Fox, that is what is really important in terms of shaping people's understanding of what is happening.”
All in all, the entire act of losing the explosives is a little disheartening. To not know where hundreds of very dangerous explosives disappeared to, in my opinion, causes and uproar of confusion, anger, and fear most of all. I think that most would agree with me at this point and would come to the conclusion as well that what we need to do is do our very best to find the explosives and get them back into the right hands so they will not be misused.

I am writing about the “On the Media” presentation entitled “Analyze What?” which was an interview between Brooke Gladstone, from “On the Media,” and Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and the writer of the blog called “Informed Comment.” This presentation mainly talked about how the quality reporting about what is going on in Iraq is slipping away day by day. Cole specifically said at one point in the conversation, “…the media situation is deteriorating on all fronts.” I personally found this to be so true because how much do we honestly know about what is going on in Iraq at this very moment, honestly, not a whole lot. The government is keeping the information away because it might scare the public to actually see what is going on, but is that a good thing or a bad thing?
In my personal opinion, it is in between the spectrum of good and bad. The idea of not knowing leans towards the good side because then there is not an uproar, which I think some people are worried about, of society because they think that they have seen more then they needed to. It also leans towards the bad side because some people, such as myself, feel misinformed, like the quality of the reporting is not good enough and we are only hearing the same things over and over again. Cole agrees with this statement by saying, “I think that very frequently the passive tense is used - "a car bomb was set off; it caused such and such number of casualties" - there's no context for it, and I think that kind of news is very difficult to evaluate. The mainstream media have often fallen into that trap, even back in the days when we could do better. A movement towards more and more of that kind of superficial reporting is certainly bad for our ability to understand the situation.” I completely agree with this statement because it is so true. How are we, as the public, supposed to react when all we hear is the same thing over and over again with no specifics as to why it is happening or how as the more important question.
This leads to the next important point of the interview, which is according to Cole, “not knowing the street level of detail affects how we should think about our success or failure in Iraq.” Not knowing detail once again leads to having a less and less quality reporting. I have personally lost three people fighting the War in Iraq and didn’t find out about their deaths until at least a week after it had happened and no I am not saying that we need to be informed about every soldier that dies in combat, but I am saying that without reporters in the field telling us why all of this is happening that people tend to think what is the point of us being over there in the first place, as I have thought many a time before. Many news stations and newspapers are pulling their reporters out of Iraq and leaving “stringers,” which are basically amateur reporters, to do the job that experienced reporters should be doing. A perfect example of this is something Cole mentioned in the interview regarding the Arabic Press, he said, “the media situation is deteriorating on all fronts. For instance, you used to get very good reporting in the Arabic press based in London. They would send smart Lebanese reporters to Iraq who would do reports from oh, Basra or Nasiriyah. But you don't see nearly as much of that kind of from-the-field reporting in the Arabic press. They seem to be more and more reliant on stringers inside Iraq of varying quality.”
Overall, the main point in all of this is that the public is not being misinformed but uninformed. We don’t know what is actually going on over there until we actually experience it first hand. I will personally admit that I did not realize how bad it was over there until I lost three people I knew. The reality is that it is war over there right now and it probably is better that we do not know everything that is happening, but like I said before the questions that need to be answered are the how and the why we have family and friends over there fighting for our country and through all of this reporters will not even set foot in the country to help to inform. It is understandable to a degree because of the imminent danger, but for myself wanting to become a reporter the main thing I look forward to is getting the information out there and knowing that by reporting this information to the public I am helping someone else, so maybe just maybe some of these reporters in the field feel the same way and are able to stand up and say rather then having a “stringer” do my job for me I will do the reporting and I will be the one to be over there and make the difference. Cole finally says, “"unless you can have a lot of journalists in there, talking to people and getting that word out, it's very hard even to have a metric for knowing whether we've succeeded or failed.” When will we know whether or not we have succeeded or failed, that is the question that needs to be answered?

I am writing about the On the Media presentation of "A Public Betrayed" which is an interview between Brooke Gladstone from, On the Media, and the two men that wrote the book "A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West," Adam Gamble and Takesato Watanabe. In this presentation the conversation mainly talked about the fact that Japan lacks a responsible press and there are two reasons for that. One being the Japanese newspapers and how they basically follow everything the government tells them to in regards to what they print. The second is the Shukanshi, which is another type of newspaper, but can basically be compared to a United States tabloid. The Shukanshi "offer shocking exposes, some true and some false, along with naked pictures and outrageous smears." When Adam Gamble was speaking at one point he basically said that all the Shukanshi does is feed lies to the public, which is basically what the tabloids here in the U.S. do as well. He said, "...feeds lies to the public about its own citizens, its own government and even its own history." This was not even half of the conversation when I came to the realization that the United States is just as reliable with their information as well. Whenever I walk into a supermarket and am standing at the checkout line I always see the tabloids sitting right there and I take a glance at the latest headlines and they are absolutely atrocious. For example, "The Star" usually has some headline like "Britney Spears marriage already on the rocks" and yes it is purely for entertainment but who would actually read this let alone pay money for such horrible reporting and in my personal opinion the only word for it is trash!
Another thing they went on to talk about is press clubs. Press clubs are where reporters basically go to get their information in regards to press releases, press conferences and other information handed to them. This was actually a positive note to the conversation for me because one of the guidelines about being in a press club is that one reporter is not allowed to write about the same thing as another reporter otherwise the consequence is that they would be removed from the press club and then would have a disadvantage because they would not have as much access to the information. This was a positive note to me because when I hear the news reports or I read two different newspapers you see the same stories over and over again and that tends to get annoying after awhile to me at least.
Basically, all in all, this was a good On the Media Presentation and opened my eyes to a whole lot more then I had seen before in regards to a disclosed media or in better words as Adam Gamble put it, "lacks a responsible press!"